


Half-Off

by PumpkinDoodles



Series: Taserbones Tumblr Prompts & Tiny (Adorkable) Fics [58]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: All the snow in Norway, And she'll fight you for it, Could be post-Wandavision if you squint, Darcy Needs Chocolate, Dr. Lewis thank you very much, F/M, TripleAgent!Rumlow, but you don't have to, meet ugly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 05:20:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29754663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PumpkinDoodles/pseuds/PumpkinDoodles
Summary: Dr. Darcy Lewis attempts to buy discount Reese's hearts in the land of the fjord. She doesn't expect to end up wrestling over the last bag with her lab's security chief.
Relationships: Darcy Lewis/Brock Rumlow
Series: Taserbones Tumblr Prompts & Tiny (Adorkable) Fics [58]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1484168
Comments: 32
Kudos: 249





	Half-Off

**Author's Note:**

> *I own nothing! Meet Ugly prompt: 57. We’re fighting over the last box of half-off valentine’s day chocolate and end up in a “who has it worse” battle

_Tromsø, Norway, (very snowy and cold)_

She hit send on an email and then it responded with an error message. “Damn it!” Darcy said to the laptop. Her wifi had gone out. “Why is the universe aligned against me?” she muttered. Of course, there was no answer. It was nine-forty-three at night and she was working alone. Darcy felt crummy. After her last job--the New Jersey thing with all the things--had gone down, she had been cajoled into a government job and transferred to a SHIELD lab in Norway. Ironically, this was the same lab where she and Jane had worked together in 2012. But Jane was in space now. So, it was her lab. Dr. Darcy Lewis, newly-minted astrophysicist, friend of Foster, survivor of umpteen whacked out supernatural phenomena, and overall smart babe. But she wasn’t feeling particularly smart or babely tonight. Jane had warned her that the exhaustion sometimes hit at random moments, especially overlaid with seasonal depression. And it was cold and dark in Norway. Darcy sighed and made a decision. She’d need to leave the lab and drive from Tromsøya to the mainland. There was a little store that catered to the lab’s rotating population of homesick Americans there. “I might be able to find Doritos,” she said to herself, trying to be optimistic. 

Darcy took the bridge to the mainland nervously; she didn’t really like driving over bridges all bundled in her coat like the StayPuff Marshmallow Man, but it was too cold to go around coatless. It was a relief to arrive in the valley and be greeted by a sprinkling of golden lights and the white silhouette of the Arctic Cathedral against the dark blue of the night sky. Darcy sighed and made her first turn. She was looking for a tiny red and white storefront. Luckily, the lights were still on. “Success!” she told herself, hastily parallel-parking and hopping out to go inside. The door opened with a jangling bell and Darcy called out a light hello in Norwegian, just to be polite. The register was somewhere in the back, not readily visible. There was one other customer, a guy standing in front of the refrigerator cases in a dark coat. Grabbing a basket, she tried not to wince at the prices. Everything in Norway was wildy expensive, even Diet Coke. But she could swing it, she told herself. She was a grown woman with a PhD. She had a salary and benefits. She could afford overpriced snacks. It was a mental health and wellness expense. She was circling the shelves in the narrow store when she saw a sign for Valentine’s Day candy. Half price, her brain registered, and Darcy beelined in that direction, utterly focused on a small bin with a single bag of slick paper-wrapped Reese’s. She was reaching for the candy when a male hand reached at the same time. “Hey!” Darcy said, looking up abruptly. They were both holding one side of the candy bag.

“Dr. Lewis?” the man said, looking at her in surprise with his dark eyes.

“You don’t even eat chocolate,” she told Brock Rumlow. 

“Excuse me?” he said.

“I’m calling dibs on these Reese’s,” Darcy said. “Gimme.” She pulled a little. He held on. The man had thick, sturdy looking fingers. Darcy realized she’d maybe looked at his hand too long and pulled her gaze back to his eyes.

“Are you five?” he said, tilting his head. He had an ambiguous expression. It was the same one he had for all the staff meetings. Rumlow was the official head of SHIELD’s Norwegian security. Also, the most legendary triple agent in SHIELD’s history, a victim of the falling Triskelion, an undercover merc called Crossbones, and most recently, just a guy healed by Helen Cho and reportedly pardoned by the President himself. Not that Darcy paid attention to things that happened to men in her vicinity who were astonishingly handsome. Nuh-uh. It was just mild curiosity. 

“I need my Reese’s fix, Rumlow,” she told him. “I’m battling seasonal depression here.”

“And peanut butter chocolate hearts will help?” he said, voice wry.

“Yes,” she said.

“That’s my working theory, too,” he said, squeezing the bag. “I’ll be testing it with this bag.” His fingers closed more around the plastic. She sucked in a breath in alarm.

“You’ll crush them with your big man hands,” Darcy said, horrified. “Stop! They smush.”

“My man hands?” he said, blinking at her. Darcy flushed a little.

“Your fingers are...strong?” she offered, biting her lip. They stared at each other. He was making an intimidating face. It practically qualified as a threatening glare. “Are you giving me the silent treatment?” she said. When he didn’t reply, she narrowed her eyes and glared back. They were having the staring contest when the shop owner walked by, looked at them, and said something in Norwegian. Rumlow turned first and Darcy used his inattention to snatch the bag away. “Ah ha!” she said, plopping it in the basket.

“Goddammit, Lewis,” he groused. 

“A problem?” the owner said, looking at them like they were insane people. Which, to be fair…

“I’ll be paying now,” she chirped. 

“We’re not done negotiating,” Rumlow said, on her heels. He was practically breathing down her neck.

“I think we are,” Darcy said smugly. Her gloating lasted all of two minutes, until her card was declined. “I’m sure I have cash,” she lied. She never had cash. What was going on with her freaking card? “But if you could scan it again?” she begged. 

“Uh-huh,” Rumlow said, when her card was declined another time and the lone five euros in her wallet wasn’t enough. “I’ll take this,” he said, claiming her basket. 

“You asshole,” Darcy got out bitterly.

“If you’re nice to me, I’ll share--” he began, but Darcy whipped around and stomped out of the store. She was furious.

“I hate Norway,” she seethed, getting in her car. She swore furiously on the drive home to her on-site apartment at the facility. She hated the snow and the cold and the inflation and the smug face of one Commander Brock Rumlow. 

* * *

She was home in her pajamas, pissed off and making Cacio e Pepe with egg noodles in a wave of hostility-induced carb craving, when there was a knock at the door. She opened it. “Hello--it’s you,” she said. Rumlow was blinking at her. “What?” she said sharply. He paused, swallowed, and blinked again. She waited.

“I got dumped,” he said. “I needed the chocolate ‘cause I got dumped.”

“Oh,” she said. “Sorry.”

“I don’t even like chocolate,” he admitted. His eyes fell to her puppy slippers. “You want some of them?” he offered, holding up the bag. He hadn’t even opened it yet. It looked a little crumpled from their tug-of-war at the shop.

“Yeah,” Darcy said, biting her lip. He looked up quickly. His expression was still unreadable. “Come in.” She shuffled inside just as her oven timer beeped.

“What’s that?” he said.

“Cacio e pepe,” she told him. “You can drain it for me and tell me about the break up, if you want?” 

“Yeah,” Rumlow said. He filled her in as Darcy plopped butter into the drained pasta. “I was expecting the break up would happen eventually--we never spent time together, but I didn’t want to be fucking dumped in this icy hellhole--that’s a lot of butter. Does cacio e pepe usually have that much damn butter?”

“Mine does,” Darcy said. “It’s pepper alfredo, okay? Don’t judge me.”

“I’m not judging,” he said, holding his hands in surrender pose. It looked especially funny when he was holding her pasta spoon and wearing her apron. 

“Stir,” she ordered. He complied and she grinned. He’d shed his jacket, so she was getting an eyeful of muscular biceps and some frankly badass-looking tattoos. 

“What?” he said. 

“I’m trying to decide if we can be friends,” she told him, tearing open the Reese’s bag and pulling out one wrapped heart in its cardboard tray. “A lot depends on how squished these are,” she mused out loud.

“You’re eating one now? Before dinner?” Rumlow asked, sounding faintly scandalized.

“Remarks like that count against you,” Darcy said back.


End file.
